


i lie | you lie | he/she/it lies | we lie | you lie | they lie

by noahfronsenburg



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Character Study, Dissociation, Gen, Implied Relationships, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, Someone Has A Type™ (And It's Very Smart Twinks), no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 06:03:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16675924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noahfronsenburg/pseuds/noahfronsenburg
Summary: “I feel as if we’ve met before, yet I am certain we have not. Is that odd?”





	i lie | you lie | he/she/it lies | we lie | you lie | they lie

**Author's Note:**

> everyone in our room at fanfest the entire weekend:  
> 

Nighttime in the Burn was cold: not the Coerthan kind, where the ice and snow started pelting the skin and soon enough their chill pervaded the bones, froze from the inside out until you were unable to move, stand, walk, run. Nighttime in the Burn was dry and harsh, and wind would pick up the aetherless dust that coated every surface and scour every inch of exposed skin until you were so dry, so chapped, your skin would bleed from worn-in cracks.

Sometimes, he longed for the days where he had worn a mask.

Only sometimes.

The rest of the time, he had a hood and a muffler.

 

 

Four souls could hardly count as a traveling party, but it was what he had to work with: himself, his companions, and young Alphinaud Leveilleur, who he was as-of-yet uncertain of where he stood with. He had never met the young man before, but at the same time—had he not, had he not come close enough to call it _meeting_? But they had never seen one another before that day, a fortnight past. And now, with Maxima and his remaining soldiers gone, it left four cold souls in the Burn to cycle watches.

The boy—

No. It was unfair to call Alphinaud that. Alphinaud was no boy, no, no more than either of his _last_ boys had been; boys who had now grown to men, if they yet lived. He did not dare ask, either, for to do so would reveal more than he wished of his hand. Indeed, when he had tried to convince Alphinaud that he need not take a watch, Alphinaud had insisted. He would pull his own weight. He could handle himself.

Indeed he could. That much was certainly true. He had given ample proof upon their meeting.

Footsteps approached behind him, face sunk down into the folds of his muffler where it was pulled up to the tops of his cheekbones, just brushing his eyelashes. He didn’t move, just continued to stare into the low coals of the fire, coated now with the heavy dust of the Burn, smoldering to cinders, his hood shading his eyes against the moonlight that reflected back up off of the aetherdust, mirroring silver into the sky from below. The footsteps stopped beside him, and in the corner of his peripheral vision, cut off slightly by the shade of his hood, Alphinaud crouched down beside him in the remaining heat of the fire.

Alphinaud had not come equipped for the Burn, so he was wearing one that was borrowed, the red of the old uniform it had been stripped from washed out to the brown of dried blood beneath the moonlight. He pulled it down from over his nose slightly to take a clear breath of air, and looked over, the shadow the moonlight cast over his face changing it into one that he’d not seen in many years.

Wordlessly, he held out the small dented mug of coffee, grit and all, that he had been warming his hands on to Alphinaud, who took it and cradled it in his gloved hands, thumbs brushing along the bent rim. He sat for a time before he took a sip, and his eyes lingered on the way Alphinaud’s lips curled around it, thoughtful.

Alphinaud lowered the cup, and looked away from the coals to him, his eyes grey and unreadable in the moonlight. “Can’t sleep?” He asked, and Alphinaud seemed surprised.

“Sometimes, I forget you are not a statue,” Alphinaud admitted, after a moment, huffing a laugh through his nose, looking down into the cup again. “Have you been told your silence is unnerving? I’ve met precious few who had such little use for words. But, yes. Indeed. I cannot.” He took another sip of coffee. “I find I have a great deal on my mind of late.”

He knew what Alphinaud was offering, but he did not take the bait. He continued to stare into the coals, and debated getting up to walk away and avoid the conversation completely. Their alliance was as temporary as the landscape of the Burn; it would not do to grow too reliant on one another. The danger…

“I feel as if we’ve met before, yet I am certain we have not. Is that odd?”

Alphinaud, it seemed, had decided for him.

“We haven’t,” he said, with what he hoped was enough finality. Alphinaud froze, the cup of coffee not quite returned to his mouth, and looked surprised. Curious, immediately. How was he so certain? When Alphinaud thought he knew him? “It is for the best,” he added. “The man I am is not the man I was. Be glad you know one and not the other.”

“I suppose that explains your experience with the Scions,” Alphinaud acquiesced after a long moment, drinking more coffee. “I find myself wracked with curiosity as to that past. You and Maxima do not know one another, but you know of me, and I feel as if I know of you.”

“And what does your knowledge tell you?” He is curious, painfully so. Despite their alliance being all too temporary, predicated on promise only so long as their goals aligned. Which would not last, of this he was sure. “I doubt it finds me a trustworthy ally.”

“Trustworthy, no, but an ally, yes.” There was a moment of quiet as Alphinaud took another sip of his coffee. “My curiosity makes me yearn for more. Who are you? Where did you come from? How do you know me, and the Scions?” Another sip, and he belatedly realized he had been watching Alphinaud with his full vision, rather than just the peripheral, unable to look away from his face. He was not unusually expressive, but there was a line of focus around his mouth, between his brows, that already shadowed how much he had aged in the last several years. How old was he now? He had to be the same age as—before, when he’d left from—

“Do you ever intend to share?” Alphinaud asked, looking at him, his eyes silver and bright in the moonlight. The heat of the coffee had made his cheeks flush slightly, and the dust had blown into his eyelashes, the few strands of silver hair escaping out from under his hood a pale white against the tan of his skin. His lips were red from the heat, partway open, his breath fogging beyond his mouth. There was a very small drop of coffee on his lip. “Who you are? Do you ever intend to? Or shall I wait with baited breath until such a time comes to pass that the decision is taken from both of us?”

He pulled his gaze away, and pushed to his feet, his lower back and left hip aching from their old wounds as if to remind him, a nail-in-the-coffin kind of noose around his neck. _Remember,_ it said. _You know who you are_.

“Then you had best resign yourself to practicing patience, as you’ll be waiting a very long time.” He nodded, tugged his muffler back over his nose for comfort, tucked his hood down, and tried not to think too hard about Alphinaud burying his face into cloth that he had once buried his face in, that had to smell like he did, that now smelled like Alphinaud. “It’s still my watch. Goodnight, Master Leveilleur.”

He could feel Alphinaud’s gaze on his back, peeling through his clothing like the petals of a rose, like Alphinaud could get to the heart of him, cut him apart, and watch the light glisten off the open packet of his chest and within it find the answers. It left a sick twist in his stomach, a low rolling nausea, a fear, primal and fundamental—for, to his horror, he was realizing he would. To make up for previous mistakes upon the last three occasions eyes like that had stared deep into him. To join hands and work towards the future. To have one, perhaps, one more, hold him accountable to his sins. But more than that, selfishness, yes, pure desire to give himself into ownership, to submit, for once, to the emotional authority of another, to let the young man decide whether or not the last of the coals that burned in him had worth when stoked or were only good as fuel for the greater fire that Alphinaud had to light to burn back the shadows.

If Alphinaud asked, he would.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr/twitter @ jonphaedrus


End file.
